Removing sky contributions from SCUBA data

The Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) is a new continuum camera operating on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. It consists of two arrays of bolometric detectors; a 91 pixel 350/450 micron array and a 37 pixel 750/850 micron array. Both arrays can be used simultaneously and have a field-of-view of approximately 2.4 arcminutes in diameter on the sky. Ideally, performance should be limited solely by the photon noise from the sky background at all wavelengths of operation. However, observations at submillimetre wavelengths are hampered by “sky-noise” which is caused by spatial and temporal fluctuations in the emissivity of the atmosphere above the telescope. These variations occur in atmospheric cells that are larger than the array diameter, and so it is expected that the resultant noise will be correlated across the array and, possibly, at different wavelengths. In this paper we describe our initial investigations into the presence of sky-noise for all the SCUBA observing modes, and explain our current technique for removing it from the data.